Is Pinterest Just for Women?

Pinterest is kind of a big deal and it's been a lightning rod for praise amongst several tech "gurus" (I cringe whenever that word escapes the tips of my fingers). But it's also garnered confusion, apathy, and even disdain from others, who aren't grasping why it's taken off as much as it has. Further, Pinterest has managed to spark some rather absurd gender-based debates amongst several online communities (Do a simple Google search for "pinterest men women" and see for yourselves).

Is Pinterest just for women?

Pinterest has been presented by many (2, 3, 4) as a female-centric brand. That fact alone has caused many males to avoid signing up for the service, further enforcing the idea that Pinterest is exclusively for women. Not surprisingly, some are upset about this. The following article was posted on Twitter - to my dying day, I refuse to use the word "tweet" to refer to anything but avian chatter - which illuminates some key points: http://clevergirlscollective.com/kristy-sammis/pinterest-sexists/ (To those who make their living online, if points #1 and #6 don't strike you as obvious, you may want to nurture a hobby and start thinking about another field.)

There are 2 things that don't make sense about the whole "Women are from Pinterest, Men are from [wherever]" drama. Firstly,... who cares?? There are no barriers to men joining the site, and Pinterest is not making any specific plea for them to do so, nor should they. It seems odd that whenever a social platform quickly gains traffic that skews either male or female, people spend exorbitant amounts of time trying to figure out why BOTH aren't represented equally (advertisers aside - that's the kind of guesswork they're supposed to do). I don't see this same level of scrutiny behind Twitter's demographic makeup, even though the testosterone level on there is also, to quote Dr. Gregory House, "below Bieber."

Twitter testosterone levels are also "below Bieber"

More importantly, people - male and female alike - need to stop making the assumption that a decision NOT to join a particular community dominated by a particular gender, is based on gender. While this is unfortunately the case for many people, for many others it's simply a lack of interest in the activity - not the community. As its name would imply, Pinterest is an online pinboard or scrapbook of sorts. If people [males] don't like scrapbooking, it's illogical to jump to the conclusion that they don't like it "because women are into it." Conversely, it's just as ridiculous to assume that some women don't like boxing or F1 racing or Tarantino films because "men are into it." At its core, Pinterest functions and presents in a very similar way as deli.ci.ous, which also skews heavily female in its demographic. Strangely, it was never communicated as a "thing women liked" as much as Pinterest has been.

Pinterest is kinda like deli.ci.ous

Who cares? Well, advertisers for one

The only ones that should even care about the demographics for Pinterest should be advertisers and businesses. It's been publicly acknowledged that Pinterest is responsible for driving more traffic to destination sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined (anyone who knows how loyal I am to Google knows that it pains me to admit that). If you're not using that data to enhance your business in some way, shape or form, give my regards to 2005.

Enough with the battle of the sexes already

While it may seem as though I'm advocating for Pinterest in some way, all I'm trying to do is deflect what I consider to be irrelevant commentary about a social media platform that many women happen to like. Some (though not many) men also happen to like and engage with others in the Pinterest community. I, am not one of them.

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